


Perspective

by Falke



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Language, Post-Canon, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-24
Updated: 2016-03-24
Packaged: 2018-05-28 17:38:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6338758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Falke/pseuds/Falke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every officer deals with that first violent call, sooner or later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perspective

**Author's Note:**

> This work is set post-canon. It includes brief strong language, a reference to domestic violence and minor spoilers from the movie.
> 
> Thanks for reading!

So this was what a savage predator was really like.

Of all the occasions Judy Hopps had for her life to flash in front of her eyes in recent months, she was surprised it had waited until now. She was on her back, feeling the weight of a fox driven mad with rage crushing the breath from her lungs, stewing in hot, mindless breath, seeing nothing but bared teeth and the gleam of feral eyes in the dim indirect light.

She couldn't move her arms, couldn't bring anything to bear to defend herself. Her taser had been knocked loose somewhere; she wasn't carrying a baton in the first place because it always slowed her down. Even the fox spray she'd almost had to use all those months ago was trapped underneath her. Useless.

The fox on top of her drew back a pawful of jagged, chipped claws to sweep at her and then his weight was gone, the breath rushing from his own chest.

"Judy!"

The harsh sound of a service taser popped and crackled above her. She coughed. 

"Come on, Tav, third floor! Get up here!"

The taser sounded again, drawing a canine yelp from somewhere. Judy rolled onto her side, still processing, still trying to shake off the moment of panic.

There was a fourth figure on the apartment doorstep, she could see now. A fox, female, holding a cloth to an injury on her neck and staring with huge eyes not at her companion, but straight at Judy. She recognized her.

The walkway shook as two more ZPD officers appeared. The tiger went straight to the perp, flicking open a set of cuffs. The hulking rhino looked at Judy, sprawled on the ground, and his brow darkened. It was intimidating.

"Hopps, you hurt?"

"She's fine." Nick snapped the launcher off his taser so the tiger could restrain the suspect safely. He tossed the spent housing on the ground and looked at her, his ears flat along his skull. "Tell him."

"I'm okay." Judy found her voice as if by Nick's command and started gathering her legs under her. "I'm okay. I just got jumped on, is all." She looked at the doorway again, to to fox who was still staring at her, ignoring Taviani's quick work beside her.

"Ma'am, are you all right?" Judy asked. "What happened?"

"Let the paramedics handle her." Nick was at her side again, looking as shaken as she was even though he hadn't been the one attacked. He rammed his taser back into its holster. She felt his paw on her shoulder. "Judy, are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she repeated. "Don't worry about me now." She stepped forward, putting Nick out of her vision. "Ma'am?"

"It's just a bruise," the fox said, with a hoarseness to her tone that suggested it was probably worse than just bruising. 

Judy turned to get Merck's attention but the rhino was already speaking into his radio, tilting his head so he didn't bash it on the bare light fixture overhead. Judy heard him call for paramedics, so she dropped it.

"You're officer Hopps, right? From the posters."

Judy felt her ears heat up. "Yes, ma'am."

Taviani had the perp bound and muzzled. He was still awake, but Nick's stun gun - or maybe the shoulder he'd put in his gut when he'd rushed him - had taken the fight out of him. Judy watched as the tiger bundled the fox down the stairs. It had worked, but there was no way it would look good on the report.

"Thank you for coming," the woman said when her companion was out of earshot. "I didn't think it would ever get this bad, but, well..."

"It's why we're here, Ma'am."

Merck loomed. "Paramedics are on their way to see to you, Ma'am. I have some questions I need to ask you, if that's all right." He turned to Judy and Nick. "Wilde, Hopps - you've got debrief to do. That's weapons discharge. Pause your cameras and get started."

"I know the drill," Nick said. Merck frowned again at his tone, but turned back to the vixen on the doorstep.

They descended to the parking lot, where another cruiser and the boxy ZMS van had pulled in. The blinking lights everywhere hurt Judy's eyes as she started to come down from the adrenaline. 

"Thanks, Nick."

"Yeah." he looked distracted as he ducked into their cruiser for a pair of clipboards. When he straightened, he plucked the little camera from his lapel with exaggerated care and flicked the single switch to 'pause' so it would commit its contents to indelible memory. He watched her until she did the same.

"Fuck," he mumbled. "Carrots-" he raised a paw toward her, then appeared to reconsider. "Promise me you're okay."

"I'm not hurt," Judy said. "Probably thanks to you."

He winced. "That's not going to do me any favors, I take it."

"You know how it works. For what it's worth, I think it beats the alternative."

He tried to smile, he really did. But it never made it to his ears.

\---

Judy had sat for just one discharge debrief before, and decided it got no easier with practice. She felt for Nick. The interviews weren't as rigorous as a hearing, but they were done in staff-side evidence rooms that were only a couple notches better than the ones they questioned suspects in on the other side of the hall. They'd given her coffee, but she wasn't about to amp her heart rate.

Bogo stayed out of it, at least. Police on admin shift got her statements, ran her through the battery of questions, and impounded her equipment for processing. It was procedural, but it made her feel guilty. She hadn't done anything wrong, hadn't even had a weapon drawn when that fox came out of the doorway and bowled her over. She had to explain each part three times, twice for the record and a third time because in her shaken state she'd stumbled over the words. The badger taking her report finally checked his notes, gave her a sympathetic nod, and gave her clearance to go with a day's leave. Also procedural.

It was for the best, of course, that this was a rough process. It was supposed to be the exception to the daily rules, a covering of the ZPD's collective tails. If she ever got too comfortable with it, it meant she was doing something wrong.

She caught sight of Nick leaving an adjacent room on her way to the lockers. He looked nonchalant, almost bored. He didn't catch her eye. It was a good sign he'd had a bad time of it, if he wasn't showing it to anyone. Even police academy hadn't broken him of that habit.

There was no rule against officers in fire situations staying in contact when they hadn't been forbidden to, but Judy was still uncomfortable waiting around where others might see them. She made her way to Central Heights.

It was a block of new apartment construction, right on the edge of the downtown district. Nick had lucked out with his timing. ZPD's housing stipend was just enough to get him one of the spots set aside for municipal staff. The rooms weren't much more than dorms and lacked a lot of what Judy liked to think of as the character of her own place in the old town, but Nick had spent the last few years of his life living under a bridge. It was quite the step up.

He arrived a few minutes after she did, and aside from a flick of his ears he betrayed no surprise at seeing her waiting on the bench outside. 

"You lost, Carrots?"

"Not exactly. I was going to suggest the usual spot but this is a bit more convenient this time of night."

Nick jammed his paws in his pockets. "Want a drink?"

"Not really."

"Good, neither do I."

There was night staff at the desk, a porcupine with her earbuds in who didn't look up from her magazine as they passed. Judy could hear the hiss of whatever she was listening to. Nick rolled his eyes.

He lived on the fourth floor, about halfway up. They rode the elevator in silence, and crossed the deserted hallway. It wasn't until Nick got the door open and shut behind him that his ears dropped and he leaned against it.

"That was harder than I expected."

Judy looked up at him. Now he was showing it, the fear and the stress. It was contagious. She could still smell the perp's breath if she concentrated, could still see the quiet fear in the vixen's eyes. She felt her hackles raise.

"It had to be a fox," Nick growled. "That's what bugs me the most. I didn't like doing that, and you should never have to do something like that." He pushed off the door and led her into the room. He had a couch looking out his floor-to-ceiling window. "There's policy. 'ZPD shall divert appropriate officers to domestic violence calls whenever possible, for maximum deescalation and to prevent scenarios that may aggravate predator-prey relationships.'"

Judy raised an eyebrow. "You're quoting regs at me? You know we went through Academy maybe six months apart."

"My point is we weren't the best choice to respond to that one."

"I've never asked for special treatment." She crossed to the couch and sat beside him. "And getting it would send the wrong message. Besides, it was a spur of the moment thing. If we hadn't been there, what would have happened to that poor vixen?"

Nick swallowed. "There is that."

It was a rare thing these days that any officer had to escalate to force, and just bad luck that it had to happen to them. Zootopia was largely peaceful to begin with, and even more so in the weeks following the predator scandal. There was much to be said for the unifying effects of civic pride. The department had fielded maybe three calls in the last month that made it to this stage.

The rest of it had been some of the best time of Judy's life. She and Nick had traveled the city, seen every corner of it: on beat, on calls, on civic outreach. They'd made a difference. It had been buddy-cop fun, and spending that time with Nick was the best use she could think to put it to. Except for the hero thing - she was ready for that to stop. It was distracting.

Some things just got thrown at them, though. One call in a hundred or a thousand was going to be dangerous and unpredictable. 

Judy settled deeper into the couch. It smelled like Nick, and she liked that. It was strong, and almost uncomfortable: something in her was still hardwired to detect and run from fox. But Nick was different. When it was him, it was okay. He was her fox.

He rolled his head to look at her, sensing her motion. "What?"

"Just thinking. We don't always get to choose what we do out there. Sometimes we play it by ear."

He considered her for a moment, then his face split into that smug grin. "I lucked out when they assigned partners, then. For when it's not always parking duty and adventures."

"Oh, wouldn't that be nice." Judy watched the evening train from the rainforest district punch through the divider on its way to Central Station. "I'd take a couple days of parking duty right now."

"Worth a shot." Judy felt his blunt claws scratching at the base of one of her ears. 

"No, don't look at me like that. Bogo would never go for it. I can't ask for something like that unless he brings it up first. If that got out to the force..."

"We did save the world. You of all bunnies deserve a break."

Leave it to Nick to make her laugh. She turned her own head so she could lean under his cheek ruff and into the crook of his neck. His arm went around her shoulders.

"I won't go on the record with it. If he notices, he notices. Until then we have to hold up the way we always have. Deal?"

"Deal." Nick smiled and pulled her closer. "Stubborn Carrots."

They watched the traffic. But out of the corner of her eye, Judy could see Nick's easy humor wasn't sticking. He was still distracted.

"Your turn," she said. 

His ears flagged. "Is it that obvious?"

She shrugged against him. "I know you too well. You can hide it from everyone else, but I know when you're doing it."

"I guess so." He tilted his head, considering. "You're right that you never expect to be the one thrown into it."

"It's what the training's for."

"I imagine I can do my job," he said. "But when I see what happened tonight, I worry. About what could happen to you, of course, but about perceptions, too. About my reactions. I know I can't go tackling everyone, but there are some things I can't just let happen, either."

"You did what you had to, Nick. And you weren't the first."

He winced. "Thanks."

"I spared what details I could in my interview," Judy persisted, squirming around to look at Nick more squarely. "Maybe you're right, that we - I - wasn't the best one to respond to an angry fox call." She watched something dim in his eyes, and sighed. "That's on me. But we both took this job. We knew what was coming."

"Just let me knock next time, is all I'm asking."

"All right." She nudged him. "No taking it back to precinct, though. Someone's bound to notice if you get all protective."

He shifted against her. "We wouldn't even be news, are you kidding? You know Clawhauser keeps a date sheet? The way Marki flirts around with the rest of the guys I imagine nobody has time to notice anything else."

Judy blinked. The snow leopard might as well have had a baton under her tail, the way she stuck to a professional work environment. "I don't think we know the same Marki. And I've seen that sheet; the smart money on it says she's into girls anyway."

"Oh." Nick shrugged, his smile creeping back in place. 

Stupid sly fox, changing the subject. Fine, she was equal to that. She settled back against his chest and started to count. He'd tell her eventually.

The trains wound their way through the divider wall, lighting up the mists of the rainforest district as its climate systems spooled up for the evening rainstorm. A couple times a week, the meteorology crews would overcrank the system, so bits of the storm would lash the central district with rain. She always enjoyed watching that.

"Do you still carry your fox spray?"

She'd known something like this was coming, but it grabbed at her heart anyway. She looked up, her count forgotten. "Nick-"

"Just keep it close," he cut her off. "Please."

She wanted to tell him he sounded like her dad, but there was something different to it, something to the way he was holding her tight. His muzzle brushed the top of her nose in a careful kiss. There was fear there, and jealousy and nerves and everything else the night had dragged him through, but what she sensed most, clear as if he'd spoken the words in her ear, was that he needed to know he wouldn't lose her. 

Tonight had shown them there were never any guarantees in this line of work, but they both knew that on some level. They had to accept that sometimes being a police officer was dangerous and disconcerting, for them and for the citizens they served, predator and prey alike. There was nothing for it but to meet it as best they could. 

And when the nights got rough, well, that was what Nick's couch was for. There was strength for her in his arms, and for him in hers.

"Promise."

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](https://falke-scribblings.tumblr.com/)
> 
>  
> 
> [chronology](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yPmpmdo39SmiRNC4BJVv2PAWi7fxBoP5FWba9n8s3qg/edit?usp=sharing)


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